2025 Indiana General Assembly 

With two weeks until committee report deadline, hearings are getting longer, and issues are becoming more complex, as they typically do during a budget year with many (sometimes) competing priorities. There are always exceptions but working to affect consumer outcomes can and does happen. The statehouse is largely a relationship business and legislation affecting consumers is no exception. 

Elections

This week, we testified on several bills, with our Lindsay Haake and Kerwin Olson concurrently testifying for consumers on different bills simultaneously in different committees. In the Senate Elections Committee, we joined several good government and pro-democracy advocates in opposing Senate Bill 284, which reduces by half the amount of time that Hoosiers may early vote. Read more about the bill from the IndyStar. SB284 will be up for a vote before the full Senate as early as Monday.

SB10, which would eliminate university IDs from the options for Indiana voter ID, passed the Indiana Senate with bipartisan opposition. Read more from Indiana Public Media here.  

Environmental Affairs

We were in the Senate Environmental Affairs Committee and happy to support Senate Bill 193, which provides enhanced oversight for Confined Feeding Operations (CFOs). Sen. Rick Niemeyer (R-Lowell) cited the effects endured by Hoosiers living near and downwind of CFOs including the constant smell and olfactory harassment of large feeding lots. Despite industry opposition, the bill passed 9-1. Read more from the Indiana Capital Chronicle here. SB193 will be up for a vote as early as Monday.

Utilities

The trio of terrible bills that grift from Hoosier ratepayers and taxpayers continues its march through the Statehouse.

SB423 and SB424 both passed out of the Senate with bipartisan opposition after a significant amount of debate. The “pilot program” subsidy for small modular reactors (SMRs) in SB423 passed by a vote of 41-7 and the statewide subsidy for SMRs in SB424 passed by a vote of 34-14.

House Bill 1007 passed Ways and Means by a vote of 16-7 on Wednesday, after more than half an hour of debate, which is notable for a bill that’s recommitted to Ways and Means.

All three bills put the wallets of Hoosier ratepayers on the hook for “project development costs” related to SMRs, effectively forcing Indiana electric utility customers to involuntarily finance extremely expensive and risky SMRs, even if the utility cancels the project. Please visit act.citact.org/I45KhgJ to email your state legislators to reject these bills!

If legislators truly want to take meaningful action to help more Hoosiers afford their bills, they would support three strong consumer protection bills at the Statehouse this year: Senate Bills 97, 226, and 434.

These bills create much needed protections for Hoosiers struggling to keep up with rising energy costs and unparalleled monopoly greed. Please act now and visit act.citact.org/kjvtpjc to urge your state legislators to hear and support these bills!

We testified in opposition to House Bill 1628 this week, which completely preempts any local control over projects that “involves the siting, construction, or deployment of facilities, equipment, or infrastructure used in the generation, transmission, distribution, or storage of electricity, gases or fluids, or water.” Many individuals and entities showed up to the hearing Tuesday morning, forcing the committee to extend testimony into next week. Our testimony focused on our concerns related to the elimination of local voices when it comes to the location of facilities that pose real risks to public health and safety, like nuclear reactors and hazardous pipelines transporting supercritical CO2 or hydrogen.

We continued to note the need to discuss policies that encourage distribution-level investments and small-scale investments that benefit the grid and the pocketbooks of everyday working-class Hoosiers, as opposed to solely focusing on only large-scale and mega projects. County officials were out in force opposing HB1628 as well.

In Senate Utilities Committee we testified in opposition to SB178, which would declare that it is the continuing policy of the state to recognize natural gas as "clean energy" or "green energy" for purposes of any state or federal program. Natural gas is obviously anything but “clean,” so we spoke in opposition. 

Also in Senate Utilities, a respectful gnashing of teeth took place in the committee room with stakeholders regarding Senate Bill 426. We expressed significant concerns regarding a new tracker for water utilities authorized in the bill, and vague language that that protects  water utilities from complaints or legal action about “alleged” exposure (presumably from poisonous or toxic water) from drinking water supplied by the water utility if “the water utility met applicable regulatory standards under the Safe Water Drinking Act.” We’ve seen this type of indemnity language before, which only stands to protect the monied interests while placing the burden of proof, along with the financial responsibility which comes along with that, onto captive consumers. 

Other Consumer Bills

As a steering member of Hoosiers for Responsible Lending, we joined a diverse coalition of partners in opposition to House Bill 1174, an unfortunate expansion of predatory payday lending in House Financial Institutions. The bill received overwhelming testimony in opposition from faith, consumer advocacy, and nonprofit organizations and the only supporting testimony was from payday lenders themselves. As with years before when this harmful legislation was introduced, our opposition was based on the fact that 180% APR for a short-term loan is harmful to Hoosiers and does nothing to lift folks out of poverty, especially when the affordability crisis has gotten worse - and will get worse with proposed legislation like HB1007, SB423, and SB424. The bill will likely be amended and voted upon next week. 

As we have in years past, we testified in support of efforts to enhance data privacy (specifically regarding genetic testing) with our support of House Bill 1521 and Senate Bill 33 in House Commerce, Small Business, and Technology and Senate Commerce and Technology respectively. 

Upcoming Next Week

• House Bill 1007 will be up for amendment before the full House as soon as Monday.

• The House and Senate Utilities Committees have not announced meetings yet for next week, but we are expecting that House Utilities will continue receiving testimony and possibly amend and vote on HB1628.

• There’s one more week of hearings but we are coming up soon on the halftime deadline for the Indiana Legislature. Keep track of legislative deadlines here.

To follow these bills in real time, make sure you follow our social media for an up-to-date detailing of our work at the Indiana Statehouse: Facebook, X and Instagram.

Respectfully Submitted,

The CAC Team